Open Mind

Nobody in his right mind disputes that since satellite observations began, the extent of sea ice in the arctic has declined dramatically; this year the summer minimum extent was the 3rd-lowest on record. There is also considerable observational evidence that arctic sea ice extent over the last few decades is much lower than it has been for at least a century prior to modern times.

A team of researchers, led by Leonid Polyak of Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Center, has culled the available evidence from hundreds of studies of proxy data for sea ice extent. As reported at Science Daily, in a new paper in Quaternary Science Reviews they report their findings: that the present extent of sea ice in the arctic is at its lowest for at least several thousand years.

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In my last post I made two predictions. The second one was this:

Second: Either Anthony Watts won’t answer my question about why he’s so fond of less than 6 years’ data when we have over 30 (and that’s just from satellites) — or he’ll attack me personally, calling me a coward for blogging under a pseudonym. After all, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

The question was this:

We have over 30 years of satellite data for arctic sea ice. Why do you consistently display the only data source I know of that covers less than 6 years?

Anthony has replied. But just as I predicted, he didn’t answer my question. Instead he told a lie.

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When it comes to up-to-date measures of arctic sea ice, the most popular choice with Anthony Watts and Steve Goddard is the estimated extent from DMI. Others seem to prefer NSIDC data for monthly averages of both sea ice area and sea ice extent, or JAXA for daily data on sea ice extent, or daily sea ice area data from Cryosphere Today. So there are several satellite-based data sets to choose from, but Watts seems to prefer, and Goddard seems to love, the DMI data.

Wonder why?

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It’s all a conspiracy of lies, deceit, greed for money and power, and hatred of all the USA stands for. It’s nothing but an attempt to destroy our freedom!

Because if fossil-fuel industry profits aren’t safe, then we aren’t safe.

And one of the most important conspirators is NASA. Specifically, the evildoers at GISS: the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The folks at GISS have been fudging the numbers, and I’ve uncovered their dirty little secret. They apply “adjustments” to the raw data (which they get from a number of sources, but mainly the Global Historical Climate Network) which they’ve cleverly manipulated to make the global temperature trend — if there even is such a thing! — seem different than what the plain old data say.

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Craig Loehle has contributed a post to WUWT claiming that a new temperature reconstruction by Ljungqvist (2010, A new reconstruction of temperature variability in the extra-tropical northern hemisphere during the last two millenia, Geografiska Annaler 92A(3):339-351) somehow “vindicates” his own work (Loehle 2007, A 2000 Year Global Temperature Reconstruction based on Non-Treering Proxy Data, Energy & Environment 18:1049-1058).

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As most of you are aware, I had predicted that the 2010 minimum of arctic sea ice extent as measured by JAXA would be 4.78 million km^2. This turned out to be a remarkably close prediction, because the minimum (so far, which is probably but not certainly this year’s actual minimum) was 4.813594 million km^2. I was off by less than 1 percent.

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We may have already passed the minimum in arctic sea ice extent for 2010, according to data from JAXA. The minimum this year (on Sept. 10) was 4,952,813 km^2.

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I’ve just returned from a conference in California … so I should be able better to keep up with moderation.

Meanwhile, here’s another open thread.